


out with the lanterns

by QuickYoke



Series: to the devil in his own way [2]
Category: Assassin's Creed - All Media Types, Dishonored (Video Games)
Genre: Crossover, Crossover Pairings, F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-28
Updated: 2017-04-28
Packaged: 2018-10-24 22:48:08
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,221
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10751373
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/QuickYoke/pseuds/QuickYoke
Summary: Five times Emily asked the heart questions, and one time it didn't answer. (The beginning of Emily and Evie's relationship from Emily's perspective. A prequel to 'the hearts that whisper on our sleeves.')





	out with the lanterns

 

 

> _“I cannot tell you how we moved. I had rather not remember. I believe my “effects” were brought in a bandbox, and the “deathless me” on foot, not many months after. I took at the time a memorandum of my several senses, and also of my hat and coat, and my best shoes -- but it was lost in the mêlée, and I am out with the lanterns, looking for myself.”_
> 
> _-The Diary of Emily Dickinson, entry 182_
> 
>  

* * *

* * *

 

The heart fluttered in her palm, a thready, delicate arrhythmia. Emily grasped it more firmly, a gentle squeeze as though to reassure a bloodless, deathless organ of its predicament. To a chair aboard the Dreadful Wale, this stranger, this woman had been lashed. Her eyes flickered, alert and astute, as she watched Emily and Meagan talk in hushed voices a few paces away.

“I don’t like this,” Meagan muttered, aiming her one-eyed scowl towards their recently acquired passenger. “I don’t like this one bit.”

“She could be the key to solving the case of the Crown Killer,” Emily insisted. “Just let me have a moment with her. Alone.”

Scowling between them, Meagan scratched at the stump of her arm beneath her coat before stomping from the bridge to busy herself elsewhere on the ship, grumbling about ‘bad ideas’ as she went. The door behind Meagan shut, and a resultant draft caught the edges of maps and charts on the table beside Emily, who ignored them and stepped forward.

The woman watched her with a keen and wary expression. Most prisoners would fidget against their bonds, but she remained perfectly still against the thick rope that tied her to the chair. Her once elegant bun hung in disarray, stray tendrils of black-lash hair against the hollows of her throat, touched with silver. One half of her face was stamped with the indentation of brass-knuckles – the work of the Duke’s men.

Two days ago Emily had gotten wind of a mysterious foreigner who had appeared in the centre of the Palace District amid a flash of blinding light and a gout of sulphurous steam that could be seen from the shore. The Grand Guard had arrested her on the spot and dragged her unconscious body away to a prison cell. There she had endured hours of questioning until Emily arrived to find a dungeon filled not with guardsmen but strewn with fresh corpses, and from this graveyard the woman had limped along, nursing a bad knee, losing blood by the second, cursing her ill-fated luck, halfway on her way to blacking out once more. Emily had hauled her over one shoulder and smuggled her across half the city, undetected.

Now she sat, bound but bandaged, looking tattered, haggard, and very angry.

“I don’t know anything,” the woman said before Emily could open her mouth. “I’ve told your damned Guards, and I’ll tell you again: I was hunting Templars. One of their artefacts spirited me away to – wherever this place is.”

“Karnaca,” Emily supplied. “The Empire of the Isles. _My_ Empire.”

The woman squinted at Emily in a new light – or perhaps one of her eyes was melded shut from the beatings she had endured. Peering around the bridge, the scattered papers, the age-pitted brass of the ship’s wheel, the rusting iron door hinges and salt-eaten portholes, the woman said dryly, “Your throne room leaves much to be desired.”

Rather than rise to the bait, Emily held the heart up in front of her, pointing it at the woman, who leaned back somewhat in her chair. “Is that -?” Her mouth screwed up in distaste, nose scrunching, “A human heart?”

A frantic series of palpitations. Jessamine’s voice slithered with unintelligible murmurings. Frowning, Emily brought the heart closer to the woman, and it beat frantically in her hands, flogging itself against her fingers like a caged thing.

“What on earth are you -?”

“Shh.” Emily angled her head closer to the heart, and at last it choked out a whisper for her ears alone. _“Miss Evie Frye. Stranger in a strange land. She drinks wrath like she drinks tea – black, bitter, and a cup every morning, noon, and supper.”_ Jessamine laughed, a dark sound, fathomless as the sea – not her mother’s voice at all, but something rough-cut and cruel. _“You need a killer to know a killer.”_

Slowly Emily lowered the heart and straightened her shoulders, standing tall. She stared down at the heart then tucked it away. “Evie, is it? Evie Frye?” Emily watched her expression, the minute draw of her dark brows at her identity so suddenly revealed. “I promise I will do everything in my power to return you, provided you help me with something in return.”

The muscles of Evie’s thighs and arms were tense, as if ready to spring forward at a moment’s notice. “Is that right? What is this task of yours, then?”

“To hunt down a killer.”

At that, Evie’s eyes went very dark, very black, catching the shadows in a clenched fist and squeezing out every drop of ink. “Hunting killers is all anyone seems to want me for these days.” Her words held a dangerous lilt, the same indecipherable edge that cut the line of her jaw with tendons. For a long moment she was silent, and Emily could see her weighing the distance between herself and the door, how likely an escape she could make. Then all at once the tension sloughed from her with a shake of her head. “Oh, very well. Since there are no better offers on the table -” Evie stood, reaching forward to offer her hand. “-You have yourself a deal.”

The ropes hung their frayed ends ‘round the back of the chair, thick loops of them slumping to the floor. Evie shrugged her left shoulder and a hidden blade slipped back into her soot and silver gauntlet. Wary, Emily clasped Evie’s hand with her own. Thick bangles circled Evie’s right wrist, large enough to be clutched like brass knuckles. Her hand, gloved in white silk, gripped Emily’s tight and yanked her in close. “I didn’t catch your name, Your Majesty.”

“Emily Kaldwin,” she replied. A cut above one eyebrow and a gash at Evie’s upper lip would leave a twin set of scars. This close, Emily could see an old scar banding her collarbone and over her shoulder, vanishing beneath her hooded coat.

“Emily.” Evie smiled, a lopsided smile, then reflexively tongued at the cut above her lip. “I hope this relationship of ours is prosperous – for your sake as well as mine.”

* * *

Citizens moved out of their way when Evie and Emily walked by, an unconscious shying like water parting before a ship’s prow. The two of them prowled the dock markets together, mingling among civilians to avoid the scrutiny of the Grand Guard. Emily idly plucked at the tail of a fish on display, while Evie scouted for a nearby window ledge for them to scale. From the corner of her vision Emily studied her while pretending to be engrossed in a merchant’s wares, only giving a perfunctory glance to the overpriced wine bottles on display.

Evie alleged to have no supernatural abilities, but she had an uncanny skill at avoiding detection. She had mastered the art of standing so perfectly still that the eye slid over her, the way a knife slid over a ribcage. In an instant she could pull the hood of her coat over her head and become lost in a crowd, slipping past guards that peered right over her shoulder. She ghosted through the marketplace and her eyes grew glassy, pupils blown. “Four guards patrolling near the bridge.” Evie said to Emily under her breath, leaning over her to thumb at the neck of the wine bottle as though they were simply two good friends enjoying a sunny afternoon in each other’s company. “An overseer on the far balcony. Several more guards over by the carriages – though we won’t have to worry about them until after we fetch this body for Miss Blanchard.”

At first Emily had doubted Evie could see all that she claimed, but she was always right. Peeking around the top of Evie’s head, Emily nodded. “We can get to the balcony and take out the overseer without being detected.”

“My thoughts exactly,” Evie murmured, close enough that the sound hummed gently, warmly against Emily’s ear. Her face had mostly healed, though the cuts at her brow and lip stood out against her skin. She stepped back and straightened the gauntlet on her left arm, tugging it more snugly down her wrist, and as she did so her arm brushed against Emily’s. “Shall we, Miss Kaldwin?”

A prickle of something flooded heat beneath Emily’s skin. As Evie began to stride towards their target, confidence in her step, a seamless swagger in the movement of her shoulders, Emily reached under her coat. She looked at Evie and grasped the heart.

_"The sights. The smells. The textiles. This place is familiar and yet foreign all at once, a twisted cacophony of what she knows."_

Evie kept walking a few paces ahead, and following in her wake Emily squeezed the heart again.

_"Strange. I cannot read her future, even for a moment. She eludes me with every step."_

Still unhelpful. Frustrated at the lack of insight, the stream of consciousness babble and metaphysical conceits, Emily squeezed.

 _"Keep digging, and you might not like what you find,"_ the heart warned. _"Or you might like it too much."_

* * *

Evie stayed Emily’s hand before she landed the killing blow. Straining against her, Emily whirled away from Dr. Hypatia to instead round on Evie. “She murdered all those people in my name! She has to go!”

“Miss Kaldwin -” Evie began.

Dr. Hypatia – Grim Alex, as she called herself in this form – wheezed against the shattered floor tiles, her neck pressed into shards of sharp ceramic by the heel of Emily’s boot. When she struggled, snarling and scrabbling at Emily’s calves, Emily reared back to kick her in the gut. Her short coiffed hair raked out in a wild splay, and her eyes held a yellowish tinge that burned with a hostile glow. “She’s not human.” Emily gripped her blade tight enough that her knuckles went white. “Not anymore.”

When Evie looked at Alexandria it was with pity, with disgust, with slavish self-loathing. “I know monsters. I know them well.” She held out the tin-fired syringe filled with a serum. “This woman can be saved. Don’t kill her because it’s easy; save her because it’s hard.”

Teeth grit, eyes squeezing shut, Emily clenched her hands into fists. Through rot and bloodfly infested laboratories they had tracked the good doctor to this place, this moment. Emily could already ready feel it -- hot blood under her hands, the spray across her cheek, her chest flooding with fury and with righteousness and least of all with mercy. With a growl, she dropped down, digging her knee into Alexandria's back and yanking her head back by her unruly hair to reveal her neck. There she stabbed the needle rather than the knife, pushing the syringe down to administer the serum. Alexandria shrieked and raved as the serum took its toll, dying her flesh clean until at last she fell silent, cured.

On the trip back to the Dreadful Wale, Emily nursed her silence, aiming a baleful glare out across the water at the island retreating in the distance. Beside her Evie handled the till.

"I see a lot of myself in you," Evie spoke over the puttering of the motor without preamble. "It scares me."

Emily snapped around to look at her, but Evie kept her eyes fixed firmly on their destination, bobbing with the motion of the current against their little dingy. "You're scared of me?" Emily asked, incredulous. Even in the short time they had known one another she had difficulty believing Evie was afraid of anything.

"I'm scared _for_ you."

Evie offered no further conversation for the remainder of the trip, no words of consolation or commendation. All she offered was a hand as Emily stepped off the boat and onto the deck of the Wale, her fingers a silk-warm press against Emily's own. As she walked away to deliver news of their mission to Meagan, Emily dug the heart from her pocket and squeezed.

_“She butchered herself in a mirror, and her reflection laughed back.”_

“Enough with the nonsense!” Emily hissed at the heart in her fist. She squeezed for any concrete answers it could give.

Jessamine’s voice swooped to a low note, round and deep and snarling. _“I will tear into all this sickness, all the rot and shit in this city and rip it out! We shall be pure again!”_

Laughter, sickening cackling laughter. Sounds of raucous dying, shrieks and squeals of animal pain that echoed through space and time. Emily almost dropped the heart, flinching back at the force of its visceral liquid-dark speech.

“Are you alright, Miss Kaldwin?” Evie stood in the doorway to the lower decks, one hand perched along the arched metal frame.

Swallowing thickly, Emily tucked the heart away and stepped forward to follow. “I’m fine.”

* * *

Wrenching her blade free of the Clockwork Soldier’s circuits, Emily collapsed to the ground in a spray of sparks. She groaned, clutching the side of her face, her slashed stomach. Something clubbed her across the back, and she staggered on her hands and knees, twisting around with blade raised to fend off another incoming cut. Her knife clattered across the floor. Four members of the Grand Guard closed in around her, flocking like red-breasted vultures to a site of fresh carrion. Emily’s heart thundered in her ears, a frantic bruit that drowned out the electric spurts from the beheaded mechanical soldier beside her.

She stretched out one hand to transport herself from harm’s reach, but the void fizzled and died on her fingertips – utterly drained. Cut, bruised and bleeding, Emily closed her eyes and waited for the killing blow. From the side a small perfectly circular grenade bounced at Emily’s feet, then erupted in a scream and cloud of flame-coloured smoke.

Through the din Evie stormed in amidst a crash and thunder. She roared as she killed one man, clenching the rings around her knuckles, her fists trailing plumes of violent smoke, lurid as a Saggunto sunset. With every swipe the smoke spread, and the guards looked on in growing horror that turned to raw terror, fear clogging their airways, choking them just as surely as Evie’s fingers choked the life from another. Evie thrust a twin-tined blade through a guard’s wrist, pinning him to the wood-panelled floor, and as he lay writhing, shrieking, the others fled. They scrambled over one another in their panicked retreat, shouting themselves hoarse down the adjacent hallways.  

Draping one of Emily’s arms around her shoulders, Evie half carried her from the mansion and back to the dockyards. She ignored Emily’s mumbling complaints, her insistence at completing the mission, at killing Jindosh. Emily viewed the world through a blood-dimmed tide – her face had been slashed from crown to temple, a narrow line that poured blood down her cheek. She blinked against it. She drowned in it. Crimson dripped from her chin and onto her violet-throated clothing.

The hallucinogens worked their swift horrors, and Emily witnessed what the others must have seen. Evie's face peeled back like a mask, it lost all purchase, it went smooth as threadbare sackcloth with holes for eyes that glittered, black on black, eyes Emily had never seen outside the Void. The pale cloth over her mouth seeped with red gore, clotted with it. In one hand Emily clutched the heart to her chest like an open wound. _“Show me your monster, Evie! These lambs need slaughtering!”_

“You will not die, Miss Kaldwin.” Evie growled, less a plaintive appeal for life and more a command. She hauled Emily along until Emily’s feet dragged along the cobbled steps leading to the flensing docks. Her cruor-flecked boots knocked against stone.

“Emily,” she slurred out her own name through blood-slicked teeth. “You should call me Emily.”

Evie barked out a harsh laugh, and the sound echoed, discordant. Her featureless face split itself into a cloven smile; something slick and black writhed where her tongue should have been. “I’ll call you whatever you like, so long as you live.”  

The heart beat and babbled in Emily’s hands -- senseless ravings that droned like a wrathful hive sprouting from an infected chest – all the way to the Dreadful Wale floating atop the wine-dark sea.

* * *

Cigar smoke trailed in blue stalks to the cabin ceiling, whirling a slow dance among the crates of luggage piled high. Emily sprawled on her cot while Evie swirled a tumbler of amber-coloured liquid at the writing desk less than an arm’s reach away. Her gauntlet and silk glove lay discarded beside Emily’s scattered diary entries, her weaponised bangles, too, leaving her hands bare. A squat barstool that normally held a few of Emily’s books stood between them, and on it rested a bowl of flaming brandy -- Snap-Dragon, Evie had called it. They burned their fingers fishing shrivelled figs from the biting blue-tongued fire. For every failed attempt, they took a drink.

Cigar stuck between her teeth, Emily recoiled from the wavering belly of flames, shaking her hand with a hiss. Droplets of fiery brandy sprinkled across her lap and she swore, furiously stamping them out with the palm of her hand.

At first glance Evie appeared far too poised for someone four drinks deep, but she flashed a smile and an easy laugh when Emily slapped at her legs. “That’s another one for you.”

“This game is rigged!” Emily grumbled around her cigar, scratching at the bandage that still hid her wound from their first trip to the mansion. “I don’t know how, but it is!”

Evie’s eyes crinkled at the edges as she shot Emily a fiendish grin. “I still haven’t seen you take that drink.”

Emily made a rude gesture with her fingers as she took a swig directly from the bottle of whiskey. Evie laughed again.

Just that morning after a week of careful preparation they had returned to the Clockwork Mansion. This time the two had snuck through the labyrinthine house in the space between the walls, quick as shadows, silent as shades. Jindosh -- smugly ensconced atop his rotunda, tinkering with his latest abominable invention -- died confident that he had seen the last of the Once Empress Emily Kaldwin. Triumphant, Emily had pulled the blade across his throat while he worked. Blood had sprayed across his desk, staining the books and figures there. Cleaning her blade on his jacket, Emily had looked up to find that Evie was watching her with a keen-edged gaze.

Here and now, celebrating their quiet victory aboard the ship, Evie watched her with a similar expression. A rakish slant to her smile, fire throwing a ghostly glint in her eyes, Evie reached forward. Without flinching, without looking away from her, Evie plucked a fig from the bowl of flames and brought the fruit to her mouth, extinguishing it behind closed teeth. Then to add insult to injury, she flicked the stem so that it bounced off Emily’s nose.

“Foul-play!” Emily jabbed in Evie’s direction with her cigar, tapping ash at her. “I’m going to tell Meagan!”

“I tremble at the thought!” Evie chuckled as she chewed the fig.

A creak outside made them both freeze, and they turned their guilty expressions to the door of Emily’s cabin quarters. Footsteps outside, clunking past the room and above deck. As harsh a reproached from their tight-lipped captain as they would receive -- Meagan normally had the footfalls of an alleycat.

Stifling their snickers in their whiskey glasses, Evie cleared her throat. “Alright alright! Your turn!”

This round Emily set aside both drink and cigar, rubbing her palms together and blowing on her fingers. She let her hand hover over the bowl, steeling herself for the plunge into the blaze. Then -- struck by a plan with the brilliance only half a bottle of whiskey could impart -- Emily snatched up a fig with her powers that branched from her open hand like black vines. The fig leapt into the air, and the entire bowl came with it.

Fire and brandy leapt into the air, spewing in every direction. Yelling, Emily toppled sideways, landing facefirst on the floor, and Evie joined her soon after, falling backwards off the chair to avoid the downpour of flame, fat drops of fire raining down across the area.  

“Are you alright!” Evie’s voice strained on a note of high panic, and her hands patted at smouldering patches of Emily’s clothing. Emily’s shoulders were shaking and when Evie rolled her over Emily choked with laughter, clutching her midriff, tears forming at the corners of her eyes. Clucking her tongue but unable to keep from exhaling a bout of relieved laughter herself, Evie crouched over her and swatted at a few sparks on Emily’s collar. “Congratulations, Miss Kaldwin, you manufactured one of the ten plagues of Egypt in your bedchamber!”

“ _Emily_ ,” she corrected, wiping at her eyes. She grinned up at Evie from her place on the floor, and in their position her knee pressed against one of Evie’s inner thighs. “You said you’d call me whatever I like, didn’t you?”

Evie went stock still. They had not yet spoken about the day Emily almost died during their first excursion to the Clockwork Mansion. Straddling one of Emily’s legs, her gaze grew hooded and dark. When she smiled, Emily could have sworn hunger kindled in the glint of her teeth. “I did, indeed. _Emily.”_

Evie tasted of roast figs, of cheap whiskey and Tyvian tabacco. Emily pressed their mouths more firmly together, admiring the texture of raised scar tissue slicing Evie’s upper lip, and Evie sighed into her. The sweep of Evie’s eyelashes tickled the bridge of Emily’s nose. She dug her fingers into the fabric at Evie’s hips, gasping when a knee slipped further between her legs and pressed.

With a groan at the back of her throat Evie wrenched back. The moment fled as soon as it had begun. She pushed herself off of Emily and staggered upright, almost tripping over the fallen chair in her haste. Evie covered the burgundy smear of lipstick at her mouth, eyes wide and horrified. Snatching up her things from Emily’s desk, Evie all but scrambled to escape the room, and a few paces down the hall the door to her own quarters slammed shut, locking behind her with a tumble of gears.

Sitting slowly upright, Emily’s heel caught the edge of the bowl on the ground. Spots of brandy blackened the leather of her boots and the grain of the wooden floor. Quiet, Emily dragged herself over to her cot and perched her elbows atop her knees. Just underneath the bed the cigar still smouldered. Emily stamped it out on the ashtray beside her bed.

Her fingers trembled. She bounced one leg in place, foot tapping a staccato rhythm against the floor, and wrung her hands together, tearing the strip of black cloth free to rub at the Outsider’s mark etched above her knuckles. It prickled and burned, igniting a fleet and terrible fire beneath her skin. Every sound leapt through the silence -- the slap of waves against the hull, the fitful breeze that rattled a buoy against its fixture, the restless heart throbbed beside the stack of books under Emily’s cot.

Leaning down, Emily grabbed the heart. For a long moment she simply held it in her hand. She looked at the brandy-soaked figs scattered across her floor. She thought of Evie’s mouth, extinguishing flames, splitting seeds with her teeth. Through the wall that separated their quarters where Evie had sequestered herself away, Emily pointed the heart.

Jessamine’s voice rasped with a painful ache, _“Oh God – What would Henry say if he could see her now?”_

* * *

Emily searched her reflection in the haze-riddled square mirror above the washbasin in her quarters. She twisted the taps shut, and water dripped into the murky porcelain basin. Pushing aside a lock of hair, Emily studied the livid pink scar forming at her temple. Most days she kept it hidden – defining characteristics were far from helpful when trying to remain anonymous – but a stray breeze from the crescent harbour could lift a sweep of her hair unless she kept it tightly pinned.

A week since their victory at the Clockwork Mansion, and a day since Emily had pinned Breanna Ashworth to the conservatory floor and planted a sword through her chest -- and still Evie would hardly speak to her for more than a few minutes. Still, Emily could not bring herself to use the heart again.  Reaching around, Emily snatched the heart from among her clothes and, glaring at her reflection, squeezed.

 _“I wish I could see you,”_ Jessamine murmured. _“I always knew you’d grow up beautifully.”_

Steam hissed through the pipes of the ship, water boiling to the surface and heating the little room until Emily had shucked her jacket, her slanted waistcoat, and stood wearing only a plain white shirt. The sleeves were rolled into uneven folds at her elbows. The tendons and wiry muscles of her forearms stood out as her hands gripped the edge of the basin in one, the heart in the other.

_"You want me to unwrap your own longings, ripe as a hothouse citron nestled in tissue. I can't tell you what you want. I won’t. That's something you must decide for yourself."_

Steely with resolve, Emily tucked the heart away and marched over to the door. She yanked it open and stomped to the engine room. Steam whistled from a rupture in one of the pipes. There Evie worked in the far corner, twisting at the pipe fitting with a wrench Meagan had undoubtedly pushed into her hands with a gruff remark about proving herself useful. Evie looked up at Emily’s approach and her expression was guarded. “Emily, what can I do for -?”

Before she could finish her sentence, Emily grabbed her by the lapels. Startled, Evie dropped the wrench and it clanged to the floor. The whine of steam mounted to a tinny shriek from the pipe, but Emily could only hear the thunder of her own heart in her chest. “I want you to kiss me again.”

* * *

Emily leaned over the side of the bed, reaching down to paw through her discarded clothes. The fabric clattered faintly with bone charms. Beside her, Evie’s naked chest rose and fell in a slow steady rhythm, her eyes closed. Emily grabbed the heart among her things. Its dry leathery skin leapt warmly at her touch.

“Do you have to bring that thing into bed with us?”

Evie rolled onto her side to drag her hand down the curve of Emily’s spine. With a shiver, Emily placed the heart back onto the floor, tucking it out of sight. She turned, leaning on her elbow over Evie, who blinked up at her. Across the pillow Evie’s hair was an ink-dark spill, unfettered and threaded with steel at her temples. Emily smoothed it back from her cheek with a brush of her thumb. “Afraid of what it might tell me, are you?”

Evie snorted at the thought, but rather than deny it she said, “If you like having your mother in bed so much, that might explain why you picked me of all people.”

Emily stuck her tongue out and grabbed a spare pillow to stuff into Evie’s face. Evie laughed and batted the pillow aside. When their brief tussle subsided, they lay side by side. Emily stuck her cooling feet under the covers to tangle her legs with Evie’s, and Evie pulled her closer. “In all seriousness now,” Evie murmured, eyes heavy-lidded with drowsiness, “if you want to know something about me, you need only ask.”

Evie’s hand rested on the curve of Emily’s hip, her fingers stroking an intermittent tattoo against the skin there. Emily studied the slope of her cheek, the roundness of her chin, the fine patter of crow’s feet at the corner of her eyes, eyes that could appear dark with intensity, light with mirth, and which were now veiled in dim lamplight. The creaking of the iron hull sheltered them from the sea, and beneath them the Dreadful Wale rocked gently, anchored off the port of Karnaca. “What was your father’s name?” Emily finally asked.

Evie’s scarred eyebrow quirked, a reflexive gesture as she answered, “Ethan.”

“And your mother’s?”

“Cecily.” Evie hummed. “Jacob has a daughter, too. I met her only once or twice before – all of this. Never was one for children, myself.”

“Why not?” Emily propped her chin atop her palm, watching the flicker of Evie’s expression as they lay together on the narrow cot. “Did Henry want them? Is that why you two -?”

“No, no. I mean –” With a sigh, Evie’s eyes screwed up and she rolled onto her back to frown at the welded metal outcropping that hung over their cot. “He wanted children, but I never did. He would have made a wonderful father. I just couldn’t risk them turning out like –” Evie cleared her throat free of a non-existent burr. “Anyway, there’s little chance of all that now. And you?”

Blinking in puzzlement, Emily repeated, “Me?”

“Yes.” Evie shot her a grin, sly and impish. “Any past lovers? Dreams of motherhood?”

Flopping gracelessly down beside her, Emily leaned her head against Evie’s shoulder and let their fingers link together by their thighs. “Wyman.” Emily smiled at the name alone. “We used to lock ourselves away in Dunwall tower. I swear in those hours I could almost forget about duty and titles. Children, though –” She drew a deep breath, gathering her thoughts. “At some point I imagine I must procure a successor.”

 _“Procure a successor._ Is that what the kids are calling it these days?” Evie pinched playfully at the sensitive skin of Emily’s bottom. “And I thought the British were prudes.”

Clasping Evie’s hand and placing it firmly back on Evie’s chest, Emily growled, “You know what I mean.”

“I do. And will you?” Evie asked. Her teasing demeanor drained away. “Procure a successor, as it were?”

“I might. I should. Ask me again later.” Emily shook herself free of the thought, but it clung to her like a burr. Throne and duty haunted her waking hours and stalked her dream-filled nights. “What about you?” She asked, staring straight ahead, afraid to see the expression on Evie’s face. “Will you leave?”

Emily could almost hear the heart’s beating through the wire-crossed mattress, feel it pounding in time with her own blood. It knocked against bone and scarred wooden flooring, whispering faint secrets just out of earshot. Swallowing past an obstruction in her throat, Emily at last turned.

Evie was studying at her with eyes cloaked and inscrutable. Then she pushed up on her forearms to lean over Emily for a lingering kiss. Their mouths traded a mounting heat. Sheets rustling, cot creaking, Evie swung a leg over Emily, straddling her waist. Her hands roved, calloused fingertips dragging down Emily’s slow-heaving chest. Tilting Emily’s chin up with the bridge of her nose, Evie murmured into the hollows of her throat, “Ask me again later.”

 

**Author's Note:**

> “I incline to Cain's heresy," he used to say quaintly: "I let my brother go to the devil in his own way.” - Robert Louis Stevenson, the Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde


End file.
